[throwuxiytayq]

I don’t think anyone expects software engineers will disappear and get replaced by janitors trained to proompt. I’m sure experts will stick around until the singularity curve starts looking funny. It’s probably gonna suck to enter the industry from now on, though.

[jazzyjackson]

Well, right, how does one become a senior engineer in a world where no one needs to hire a junior? I'm sure many other industries have experiences this already, where the only people who know anything retire and the people are left maintaining a system they could not rebuild such that when something goes wrong the only practicable choice is to replace it with new equipment.

That's where I see AI-written software going, write-once. Some talented engineer gets an AI system to create a whole k8s cluster to run an application and if any changes need to be made, bugs fixed, it will take another talented engineer to come in and have an AI write a replacement and throw out the old one.

Reminds me of this blog, The real value isn’t in the code [0], we're heading for a world that is only code and no one who knows what it does. But maybe it won't matter.

[0] https://jonayre.uk/blog/2022/10/30/the-real-value-isnt-in-th...

[weatherlite]

> Well, right, how does one become a senior engineer in a world where no one needs to hire a junior?

You don't. Unless the person is super brilliant I just don't think the industry needs many more new people, there are enough for the next 1-2 decades and after that humans will probably not be needed at all.

People should go where the demand is - medicine, education, policing or whatever it may be.

[paulryanrogers]

> People should go where the demand is - medicine, education, policing or whatever it may be.

'Where' is becoming an increasingly small niche with ever higher educational requirements.

[tmaly]

One could put a lot of time into open source or run your own side hustle to build up experience to a senior engineer level.

I don't see the corporate path being the best way given the circumstances.

[dingnuts]

> I don’t think anyone expects software engineers will disappear

holy gaslighting Christ have some links, lots of people think that

https://www.reddit.com/r/ITCareerQuestions/comments/126v3pm/...

https://medium.com/technology-hits/the-death-of-coding-why-c...

https://medium.com/@TheRobertKiyosaki/are-programmers-obsole...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/hessiejones/2024/09/21/the-auto...

and on and on, endless thinkpieces about this. Certainly SOMEONE, someone with a lot of money, thinks software engineers are imminently replaceable.

> until the singularity curve starts looking funny.

well there's absolutely no evidence whatsoever that we've made any progress to bringing about Kurzweil's God so I think regardless of what Sam Altman wants you to believe about "general AI" or those thinkpieces, experts are probably okay.

[cdolan]

I think you are correct that people say this, but its absurd that they are saying it in the first place.

Coding/engineering/etc is all problem solving in a strucutred manner.

That skill is not going anywhere

[dingnuts]

oh I agree but the last three years has felt like an endless chorus of people telling me SWE was going to be obsolete very soon so I had to push back against the idea that "nobody" thinks that.

I wouldn't have to listen to people talk about it all the time if nobody thought it was true

[daveguy]

(not GP) To be fair, just because someone says something doesn't mean they believe it. Most of those folks have to know they're being absurd. But I agree saying "nobody" thinks something is over the top. People on the internet can be quite looney tunes.

[mediaman]

A lot of people believe that programming is the typing of odd sequences of characters into a computer.

To them, it seems LLMs are also perfectly capable of typing odd sequences of characters.

The idea that SWEs do actual structured problem solving is mostly native to industry insiders.

[daveguy]

Thank you for this. A very well stated explanation of a major reason the hype is soo off base from the people doing the work every day.

[schainks]

> proompt

The verb you use when you only need to produce boilerplate.

> Prompt™

The verb you use when it's time to innovate.